User-Centered Discourse: An Analysis of the Subject Positions of the User and the Librarian

Approaching the Anti-Collection

“…The "axiological continuum of collections" is especially interesting in terms of potential anti-collection alternatives, both positive and negative, to standard treatments of the "user" by core collections. The use of such terms as user, customer, client, or patron has been shown to have broad implications for expectations and values regarding the activities of nonlibrarians within the library setting (Tuominen, 1997). Without resorting to neologisms such as conducer (Reuveni, 2007), we can predict that as the anti-collection continues to expand, its user-centered values may become more commonplace in the core collection as well.…”

Informing choice: The organization of institutional interaction in clinical midwifery care

“…First, user-centered perspectives critique a mechanistic and paternalistic model of communication that characterizes information as an objective entity that can be transferred from one speaker to another and whose value can be measured in "amounts" (Frohmann, 1992;Tuominen, 1997). A second consequence has been increased attention to the role of the interaction itself in shaping outcomes (Heritage & Maynard, 2006a, 2006b.…”

“…Researchers are especially interested in power relations and how power affects the construction of the discursive space. For example, Frohmann (1992) and Tuominen (1997) critiqued the cognitive paradigm and the interests involved in representing library users as autonomous subjects. Hayter (2007) found that nurses' use of medico-statistical facts downgraded potential side effects.…”

“…Health decision models abound, but terminology and specific details are often inconsistent (Moumjid, Gafni, Brémond, & Carrière, 2007;Young et al, 2006). In a paternalistic model, the provider's knowledge is taken as superior to the client's, and simply providing information is seen as sufficient to improve outcomes (Dixon-Woods, 2001;Frohmann, 1992;Lee & Garvin, 2003;Tuominen, 1997). The provider sets the goals and makes decisions, assuming that the client's interests will be congruent with his or her own.…”

“…Spoel (2007) cautions, however, that the ideals of midwifery informed choice are challenged by the very consumerist discourse from which the model emerged. Consumerism has been widely critiqued for representing clients as rational and monologic subjects (Tuominen, 1997), simultaneously enlightened and ignorant (Frohmann, 1992). These representations are criticized as ignoring both the embodied and emotional nature of practitioner-client encounters (Bishop & Yardley, 2004, p.467) and the social, cultural, economic, and political contexts within which individuals live and must make decisions (Spoel, 2007, p.24;Lupton, 1997;Henwood, Wyatt, Hart, & Smith, 2003); and for shifting responsibility for the management of health from provider to patient (Salmon & Hall, 2003).…”